Azar Swan releasing guest-filled album (stream a track ft. Pyrrhon's Doug Moore)
Brooklyn’s Azar Swan are releasing a new album, The Hissing of a Paper Crane, this Friday (10/25), and it features a handful of cool guests joinint the core duo of Zohra Atash and Joshua Strawn, including Terence Hannum (Locrian, The Holy Circle), Mark Solotroff (BLOODYMINDED, Anatomy of Habit), Doug Moore (Pyrrhon), Paige A. Flash (Cult of Youth), Thomas Boettner (Straight Panic), Justin Blaire Vial (Kindest Lines), and Ed Strohsahl (Billie Davies).
Ahead of its release, we’re premiering the song with Doug Moore, the six-and-a-half minute closing track “The Vengeful Sun.” Usually Azar Swan are known for making ethereal goth rock, but with the help of Doug Moore, they go into much more gruesome territory. In place of the pounding post-punk backbeats that Azar Swan often favor are buzzing, murky layers of noise, and Doug sounds like a beast from another planet. Picture like Filth-era Swans jamming with Streetcleaner-era Godflesh, and then Prurient covering the recordings from memory years later, and that should kind of give you an idea. Here’s what Josh says about it:
One of the most rewarding things about making this record the way we made it has been the spirit of collaboration and camaraderie. Doug gave a killer performance some time ago at an event designed mainly to showcase extreme music vocals called The Defiant Voice. We’re already huge fans of his work with Pyrrhon, but that performance sort of sparked this idea of pairing his specific style with the more abrasive and discomfiting aspects of Zohra’s style. This was one of the first songs where we decided it might be cool to invite friends to work on some of these tracks with us, and we were blown away by what he ended up doing.
Azar Swan will also play a hometown release show on album release day at Trans-Pecos (10/25) with Pop. 1280 and Canal Street Electronics (Michael Berdan of Uniform), and DJ sets from Ana Breton and Ben Greeberg (of Uniform). Tickets are on sale.
Listen to to the new song and see the full tracklist and list of guests below…
Tracklist
1. The Next Great Dying
2. Sahara Dust
3. The Hissing of a Paper Crane
4. Violence Cascade
5. Accelerant
6. The Vengeful Sun
all songs written, performed, arranged and recorded by Zohra Atash and Joshua Strawn
with guest appearances by:
Mark Solotroff (electronics on 1 & 4)
Terence Hannum (electronics on 3)
Thomas Boettner (electronics on 2 and 4)
Paige A. Flash (cello on 1)
Doug Moore (vocals and lyrics on 6)
Justin Vial (electronics on 6)
Ed Strohsal (bass guitar on 3)
